How-to: Dell 2209WA running at 75hz (or 76hz) and information regarding refresh rates

2012-12-18 update: This tweak still works with Windows 8.

To use this on Windows 8 you will need to disable driver signature enforcements. This video will show you how to do it.
After that, right-click the .inf file and select Install.

Now go to:
Device Manager -> Monitor -> Dell 2209wa (or similar name) -> Properties -> Driver -> Update Driver -> Let me pick… -> Dell DELF011 (EDID Override)

Reboot and you’re all set!

Quick download link: Download Dell2209wa76hz.zip

Original post follows below

I was surfing around the other day researching screen tearing and how it could be avoided, and stumbled upon a little driver hack that enables a faster refresh rate on this particular monitor. You can do it just as well with third-party applications like PowerStrip, but a native solution is great and enables you to use this higher mode only in games or certain applications, while maintaining the standard 60hz when you are using your computer for other things.

Please divert your eyes to the lower left corner!

So what’s the deal with faster refresh rates?
Faster refresh rates means you will get less screen tearing. It also heightens the response time of the monitor, allowing it to display information faster both normally and if vsync is enabled (going from 16.67 ms to 13.16 in response time.) It is also stated in the official specifications that the 75hz mode is supported.

Does it help?
I was a bit hesitant at first, but it really does! After toying around with it for a bit, the biggest difference turned out to be the timing I got when I  played DJ Max Trilogy; the result was very palpable, but i noticed that almost all games suffer much less from screen tearing while using 76hz.

Wolfenstein (2009) proved to be one of the best examples as it had some horrible tearing issues at 60hz which were all but gone at 76hz.

What if the game/application doesn’t let me select which mode to use or reverts to 60hz?
Many games have flags that you can send when starting it. If they don’t, a third party app might be able to force the refresh rate.

Download!
Finished reading? Go ahead and download the fix here:
Download Dell2209wa76hz.zip

After unpacking, right-click the file you get and select “Install”. Please note that this fix is only for the Dell 2209WA monitor. Similar fixes may be available for your monitor, Google knows!

This does not alter any drivers you have installed for your graphics card, such as ATI Catalyst or nVidia GeForce.

A footnote regarding 75/76hz difference
I put both 75 and 76hz in the topic because there seems to be little difference between these two values and people use them interchangeably. After applying the driver mod my OSD shows 76hz which seems to work fine. I have not read any reports that this 1hz difference would be a problem.

In other news

Go Saints!

Mini computer parts review (Including Radeon HD5770!)

I bought a new computer a few months ago (part list here) and thought that I would express my opinion about most of the individual parts in a small compiled blog post. If you came from Google or another search engine, just scroll down to the part you’re interested in for its own mini review.

The parts are assigned in three categories. Happy reading!

The good

Corsair CMPSU-650TX 650W
I’ve had absolutely zero issues with this power supply. It runs virtually fanless on low loads, and seems to do a great job under stress too. It even managed to power 2xHD5770 without issues.

Corsair Hydro Series H50
I was a bit hesitant about this closed-loop water cooling system due to its steep price tag, but in the end it proved to be a great investment. I’m running my Intel i5 comfortably at 3.7GHz (Remember, the stock speed is 2.66GHz!) at about 50-55C or so at full load. Virtually 4 extra GHz for about a hundred dollars is not a bad bargain!

Fractal Design Define R2
Quite frankly one of the best cases I’ve seen. Tons of HD slots, sleek design and very thick metal makes this a great investment both now and in the future.

 

Intel Core i5 750 2,66GHz Socket 1156
It’s fast, it runs very cool with the Hydro H50 (Although I’ve heard the stock cooler is supposedly pretty bad.) and it gives mad overclocking abilities.

The bad

Asus P7P55D
Aside from the horribly ugly crapware that Asus sends with this motherboard, it’s actually pretty decent. The only reason it’s in the “bad” category is that this motherboard does not support CrossfireX like stated. Since the second PCI-E port is of 4x (speed) you can not have a multi-GPU configuration with this board. Having bought two HD5770 cards and finding worse performance using Crossfire than without (15fps with Crossfire vs 60+fps without in Serious Sam HD) was an unpleasant surprise. Of course I only have myself to blame for being uninformed, but you’d think that having Crossfire stamped in big on the box seemed like a good indication of its support, but alas. So what kind of Crossfire does it support then? Apparently, multi-gpu on a single-card one. Thanks, Asus… Not.

Corsair Dominator DDR3 PC12800/1600MHz CL9
They work just fine, but start to crash at >=1650MHz for me. Not much left to the imagination.

 
Sapphire Radeon HD5770 Lite HDMI DisplayPort Dual-DVI 1GB
I really wish I could put this in the “good” pile, but unfortunately, not all is well. The card itself has exceptional performance for its price. A sub-200USD card that runs Crysis at very acceptable framerate is quite a feat. Unfortunately, the drivers are horrible. Remember that I wrote about my DXVA problems that solved themselves a few weeks ago? Well, they didn’t, as I’m having the same issues again in the 9.12 hotfix. Not only that, but who could forget the Saboteur fiasco? There’s also my recent Voddler issues and fullscreen video crashes. ATI do seem keen to fix their issues and they constantly release updated drivers, but they’re not anywhere near done yet, nor will they be in the foreseeable future.

Oh wait, I also forgot this ATI Overdrive bug. Now I don’t feel so guilty for putting this in the “bad” pile anymore.

PS. People in the ATI support forum are really unhelpful. Doesn’t work? Buy more hardware! DS.

The ugly

Kingston SSDNow V Series 64GB
This disk has some serious stutter issues. Simultaneous read/writes go very slow, and the cache does a poor job of keeping up. It –is- faster than a regular hard-drive if you’re running games, but if you’re updating Windows, downloading a couple of files and browsing the web all at once, expect up to 5-10 seconds of freezing, and expect it often.

It also doesn’t support the TRIM command. (You want that, or else your speeds will diminish with time.) And no, not even the 40GB model that has a compatible Intel chipset and simply needs a firmware update. Well done, Kingston.

Next time…
I’ll definitely look more into multi-GPU configurations. If you’re looking to buy a computer, read reviews and performance tests carefully before building! Very few motherboards today support true 16x/16x Crossfire support.

In other news…
 
I’m going to become a Samba God – watch me shake!

Make any computer run faster – the cool way!

Just wait until I try a multiplication!

Many people are familiar with the fact that their computer becomes more sluggish and less responsive over time, but few people know that this is caused by quarks (a sort of microscopic dust) gathering in the internal pathways of the Central Processing Unit (CPU) of the computer as shown in the image below. What happens when you reinstall your operating system is that the pathways are cleared during the first cold boot after reinstallation. Luckily, new research has found that there is another way of clearing the pathways, one that will make your computer feel pretty much as fast when you started it the very first time. Keep reading for instructions.

Some of the pathways most prone to clogging
include the 4-channel DMA bus.

Let’s do it – the cool way
The original research made by the HCDE university in Washington shows that the dust-quarks are highly susceptible to cold temperatures and fall apart into smaller particles when exposed for a prolonged amount of time. You might have felt this effect if you have a laptop and brought it in from a cold day outside, but cold itself is not the answer. Due to the way that a modern-day CPU is placed into a socket, the pathways become exposed only when the processor is put upside-down, which is why you  might not have felt a tremendous difference – the computer has to be placed so that the CPU is pointing downwards.

Testing time!
I was very interested in trying this out – here are the instructions:

• Cover laptop in a plastic bag to avoid any moist from the freezer. (Optional, I had no problems without it)
• Put laptop or stationary computer upside-down in  the freezer. I tried it for twenty minutes and got a fantastic  speed improvement!

Result
I ran SuperPi both before and after, calculating pi to 1M decimals. The result:
Before: Calculation took 43 seconds
After: Calculation took 36 seconds

This is a fantastic increase (Seven seconds!) , and I urge you all to try this fantastic new find out! Go ahead and let me know how much you managed to improve in the comments!

In other news…
I’m gonna be making the “In other news” section a permanent addition to my posts. That’d be all, folks!

A final note…
In case you haven’t noticed yet, this was my April fool’s joke for 2009! Although putting your computer in the freezer for a few minutes probably won’t kill it, it won’t make it go very much faster either! Cheers everyone!